


let the words spill through

by wildtrak



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Angst, Death Themes, Insecure Jaskier | Dandelion, Introspection, M/M, Mentions of self-harm, Not Beta Read, Pining, Self-Doubt, Self-Indulgent, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:15:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23064565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildtrak/pseuds/wildtrak
Summary: Twenty years. It's a long time to wait for someone, especially when your life is just a brief flicker of flame in the endless stream of time. The years have a way of floating by unnoticed when you're far enough in denial.  Jaskier keeps his head in the sand for as long as he can, until there's nowhere left to hide in the top of the hour-glass.Spoilers for Season 1 (possibly AU after Episode 6).
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 10
Kudos: 72





	let the words spill through

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from [ Reflection by Tool](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MzVuHqsNoM).

_As full and bright as I am_  
_This light is not my own._

* * *

There are few people on this spinning wasteland of a planet who know when they'll die. For most it's a lucky dip—their fortunes are determined by the whim of circumstance or the curse of stupidity. Call him an optimist, but Jaskier, barring some diabolical twist of fate, feels secure in the knowledge that of the two of them, he will be the first to go.

His squishy human frailty is no match for the endurance of a witcher. His cells are not fortified by mutation nor magic, and they will crumble to dust long before Geralt feels the bite of old age in his bones.

And that makes all of this easier, believe it or not.

It's easier to smile, to laugh and joke when you know you've been earmarked for an early exit. Your presence in the lives of others is a finite resource. They'll go on, long after you've ceased to hold any relevance, and live out their days without you.

They might find another just like you to fill the void you've inconveniently created, or they'll move on, unbothered by your absence and feeling no appreciable loss. You might even wonder if you ever really existed at all.

Jaskier has never said any of this to anyone. Such thoughts are merely a sobering moment in an otherwise tumultuous sea of wild fantasies. It's a return to earth when his imagination takes him too high into a heavenly dream of a life honestly lived. One where he's brave enough to say the things that are clattering around in his heart. Brave enough to forego speaking just to make noise and instead letting his hands draw the shape of his love in deeds and action.

Cupped palms cradled around a familiar jaw. Knuckles kissing when walking too close. Careful hands brushing back the loose strands of unruly hair. The slide of fingertips over mountains and valleys of heated skin.

He's getting ahead of himself again.

It’s been years since the fateful afternoon in a darkened tavern when Jaskier crossed paths with Geralt for the first time. He’d heard of him by a few different names; The White Wolf, The Butcher of Blaviken, or That Mutant Scum in some of the less refined areas of the realm. But Jaskier knows only too well how reputations are built and broken on inference and innuendo, and resolves to find out for himself if the witcher is all he’s rumoured to be.

He’d looked remote and resolute, and a little bit sad in Jaskier’s estimation. Granted, Geralt was sitting in a particularly gloomy corner of the room, so the shadows on his face were deeper, making him look more miserable than he probably was. Jaskier had felt a stab of empathy for the man even then, well before their shared history had begun. 

Geralt is solid and substantial in a way that seems to draw everything around him nearer, like a celestial body draws rocks and cosmic vagabonds toward the danger zone. The witcher doesn’t vaporise him when he approaches though, and Jaskier can see that Geralt is putting up an impressive front. However, it takes little more than a closer look for Jaskier to see the pain and the loneliness that is barely concealed behind a curtain of wild grey hair and an angry expression. 

This one needs a friend, Jaskier had decided, and that was that. 

What Jaskier hadn’t anticipated was finding that same loneliness and pain lurking in his own heart. He thought he’d stuffed it down far enough that he could almost pretend it wasn’t there. He’d drunk buckets of ale, had dozens of affairs and written an embarrassing number of terrible ballads, and that should have been enough to douse his own wistful emptiness. 

The two of them together causes an inconvenient amplification of Jaskier’s neuroses though, and while he’s happier than ever being on the road with Geralt, his artist’s sensitivity and insecurity have their moments. 

He can take the shit Geralt heaps on him for his lyrical missteps, can ignore the irritated glares when he’s just a bit off-key, but there are days when Geralt’s grumbling hits its mark in the soft and vulnerable part in his chest. It hurts, and it makes him want to draw himself inward so maybe Geralt won’t send him away. If he could silence himself, in those moments he would cut out his own tongue rather than risk being cast out by someone he considers his friend. Best friend even. 

His public success is an unexpected boon. It keeps them fed and housed and warm on the nights when the weather is truly foul, and for that he can tell Geralt is grudgingly grateful. Jaskier’s little reputation enhancement scheme is paying dividends when they aren’t shunned from town anymore, and that uneasy set to Geralt’s shoulders when he sits on a barstool and orders a drink is starting to loosen up. 

They can afford two rooms tonight, and Jaskier is almost tempted to pursue the pretty bar-maid who has been topping up his ale for free for most of the evening. But something stays him when he thinks about making an invitation. 

He’s been telling a long and wild story about a werewolf stealing Geralt’s pants from the clothesline outside their camp one morning after a full moon. The witcher is smiling, leaning into his space to cuff him on the arm when the tale turns a little too good to be true. The assembled crowd starts to move away, groaning and throwing their leftover dry bread when Jaskier starts to describe his own heroics in saving Geralt’s modesty from the would-be thief. 

“Honestly, I don’t know what he’d do without me,” Jaskier says, with a flourish as he finishes the story. Geralt stills at his side. 

Jaskier is proud of himself for a moment. Vindicated. For once he's not the one on the back foot, ducking away in the face of an interaction that's turned heavy with unsaid things. He's not the first to break, and he can feel the high-ground shoring up under his feet. The creaking leather as Geralt stands, drawing away to a safer distance. It's the sound of an empty victory, but nonetheless makes Jaskier feel in control of his own body, in control of his reactions and words.

It's cordial, yet loaded. The evidence is mounting and he is almost certain the undercurrent is not his doing alone. Geralt is meeting him in the middle with a voice gentled by affection and a gaze that's shy and unsure of its welcome. It darts around searching for a lifeline. A tangent or a change of subject, or an allowed reprieve when Jaskier releases him from the social convention of polite conversation. He's permitted to leave and does so with haste. Not because he's got nothing more to say, but because there is nothing he should say.

It's like countless other times, a swift retreat. The desperate adoration that sinks him when Geralt is present recedes like a backed tide. Maybe this is the day Jaskier surfaces.

* * *

So Jaskier carries on, murdering the affection he feels for Geralt every day, over and over in different ways, even though it sprouts anew in the morning. It's the only way he can think of to protect himself when he knows he’s going to have to give Geralt up. He just wants to make it less painful in the end. Only it doesn’t seem to be working, and it makes it more painful really, and for a longer time.

As strategies go, it’s not his best.

In his infinite wisdom, when he does finally state his case, Geralt is distractingly naked and still covered in Selkie Maw guts. Jaskier finds a way to enquire in a roundabout way what Geralt wants from his life, and despite the gruff denials, Jaskier can sense that it’s not as simple as Geralt makes it out to be. 

He thinks if he can just get Geralt out for the night—to show him the comforts of his world just as he’s been shown the magic in Geralt’s—that maybe the witcher will dream a little bigger. Imagine an actual life instead of the relentless pursuit of just scraping by on his wits and prowess with a sword. 

His luck runs out with the curse of a djinn and Geralt’s sudden fascination with the witch. It knocks some sense back into him—or rather strangles some sense into him—and Jaskier is reminded of just how ludicrous his romantic aspirations are. 

Like sobering up after a blissful few weeks under the influence of some fine herbs, the cold knock of reality leaves him disappointed in himself. There are things that are not for him to have, and it’s the fault of no one but the fickle hand of fate. He was born for another purpose, and there is little room for the degree of sentimentality that the witcher inspires in him. 

At first he thought the thing with Yennefer was just funny. He’d be wildly hypocritical to get on Geralt’s back about a bit of casual sex. Except there is nothing casual about the way Geralt becomes so suddenly and completely intoxicated, and certainly nothing amusing. 

But Yenn isn’t a permanent fixture, she just floats in and out of their lives as circumstance allows. Sometimes Jaskier can almost forget about her, if it weren’t for the occasional dramatic sigh from Geralt whenever the topic of love comes up in conversation. 

It makes no sense to separate, despite Geralt’s cold dismissal on the side of a mountain. They were here for the same reason, and it’s not like a bit of awkwardness is going to kill either of them. It’s painful, yes, and makes for a complicated dance through the everyday basics. Avoid eye contact when passing by. Occupy the common spaces on a timeshare, an unspoken but agreed studious avoidance. Overly polite but strictly business when verbal communication is required. 

It’s a tiresome way to live, but the alternative is an honest discussion and neither party is keen to be the first to speak. How long can this go on? Who will crack first and leave, and say to hell with their ongoing crusade? It probably won’t be Geralt, who is more at home with silence and solitude, but Jaskier is starting to feel the strain. 

The apology is not his to make though, and it seems as though he’ll be waiting a while for Geralt to voice it, despite the softening in his brow when their eyes do meet by accident. Time is a different proposition for Geralt, and Jaskier isn’t known for being patient even by regular human standards, but still he waits. He’s already been waiting for years, and he’s not getting any younger or prettier. Time leaves its mark in wrinkles around his eyes and aches in his body, but there is still some vain hope that Geralt will see something worthy in him.

He doesn’t need to see Geralt to know the witcher is watching him. He’s had this strange awareness of Geralt’s wearabouts ever since their first acquaintance. Call it an energetic current or a sixth sense—it’s there even now, letting him know that Geralt is in his orbit, the gravity of his body like a tugging thread. He doesn’t move, and gives no acknowledgement as the bulk of Geralt’s form passes behind him where he sits. But he feels the pull. 

The desire to turn around and bury his face in that broad chest is strong. He wants to wrap his arms around Geralt and breathe in the scent of him, to feel swallowed up and blanketed until all of his restless and hopeless love is contained there in the circle of their bodies. He just wants somewhere to put it all, before it escapes out of him, gross and malformed as an unreciprocated obsession. 

He’s not imagining it. He knows he’s not. There has always been some subtle flicker of interest. In Geralt it’s little more than a harmless indulgence. 

For him it’s a large chunk of his life that has hinged on a maybe. He won’t regret his time with Geralt—after all, it’s given him his success and renown. There’s just that pesky notion of his that maybe Geralt is the one he’s meant to love, and that he’s somehow missing out on something more. 

His love for Geralt exists in varied forms, but it’s the unrequited bit that stings. They have a love born of time in the trenches—it’s battle-hardened and reliable. It is a love that says “You’ll never be left alone to fight, I will always have your back.” But when there’s nothing to fight, no monster to slay, then that love dulls away. 

There is the love that renders aid, that cleans blood and stitches wounds. That love is mundane but constant, and is there in times of strife to make life a bit easier. It’s having someone else to fetch and carry when you’re in pain, or to soothe your aches with skilled hands and scented oils. 

But the one that Jaskier keeps stumbling over is that flare of heat when Geralt moves a certain way, or, gods help him, smiles at Jaskier. No matter how many times he sees Geralt naked, whether he’s practicing his medical detachment, or playing the helpful valet, there is a flutter of anticipation that sends him tumbling back down the rabbit hole. 

He wants Geralt, plain and simple. 

It’s an ugly honesty to face, that in all their years together so much could hinge on a basic carnal act that Jaskier hasn’t exactly been denying himself. What’s worse is that he would risk it all, the years of groundwork in gaining Geralt’s trust and confidence, just to have one moment of the intimacy he craves. 

He wants Geralt to wreck him. To obliterate the memory of every lover he’s taken before, so he can be made new again, a clean slate that knows only Geralt’s touch. He wants to slide closer, into that warm space where all the artifice and performance is stripped away and only unspoken feeling remains. He wants honesty, for once in his gods forsaken life. 

A few days after their mountainside quarrel, Geralt leaves town. Jaskier finds his room paid up until the end of the week and a peace-offering of herbs and salves on his bedside table. There’s no note, but Jaskier hears of Geralt’s departure through the grapevine of drunkards that greet him in the bar. He thinks for a moment about following, but in the end he lets Geralt go. He’s full of love with nowhere to put it and it’s time to move on. 

Jaskier has told Geralt where he plans to be, and if the witcher ever deigns to say the words, Jaskier will hear his apology. But for now, he’ll continue on across the mountains and out to the sea. There he can scream himself hoarse into the crashing waves, until he’s hollowed out and empty again. He’s got no more use for his voice. 

**Author's Note:**

> This is unbeta'd so if you spot a typo, feel free to let me know.


End file.
